


Steve Harrington and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

by elegantstupidity



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Gen, Hawkins Nonsense, Investigations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/pseuds/elegantstupidity
Summary: Steve, needless to say, didn’t like any part of this.Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to say it anyway.
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 40
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Steve Harrington and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gothyringwald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothyringwald/gifts).



Steve, needless to say, didn’t like any part of this.

Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to say it anyway.

“This is a terrible fucking idea,” he hissed, what felt like every hair on his body standing on end. He wanted to believe it was just nerves making him break out in goosebumps, not the insistent sense that someone— _something_ —was watching and had been ever since he and Robin first got here. He wanted to believe it was just paranoia making the back of his neck prickle.

Sure, breaking into their boss’s locked, secret office—not the one in Family Video that Mr. Jacobson used maybe four hours a week; Robin had already given that one a thorough ransacking and—probably wasn't going to end the way so many of his bad ideas lately did. He hadn’t yet gotten his face bashed in. Which, he guessed, was an improvement on the usual terrible ideas he got caught up in. It was pretty cold comfort considering the usual terrible ideas he fell into involved hostile governments and goddamn aliens.

(It didn't matter how often Dustin explained that those demodogs or whatever had been the interdimensional offspring of an evil mind-control monster. Steve knew an alien when he saw one.)

So far, he and Robin had even had pretty good luck. They’d managed to scale the barbed wire fence and distracted an actual guard dog, though Robin had been suspiciously prepared for that little snag with a steak as big as her face. When he thought about how much recon she must have done, on her own, without him, he just felt vaguely queasy. And even more certain that this was all about to blow up in their faces only intensified.

Robin clearly did not share in his conviction. She made a dismissive noise, just like she’d done the first three times he’d said it, and didn't bother trying to talk him around again. Steve already knew all the arguments— _Wasn't it weird that Mr. Jacobson took over Family Video so suddenly? Didn't he seem a little too invested in the membership files? And what about the new releases, Steve?_ —so he couldn't exactly fault her for not repeating them. Especially when most of her attention was zeroed in on the locked door before her and the set of lock picks she was so delicately maneuvering.

The only answer she'd given him when he'd demanded to know where the hell she learned to pick locks had been a shrug and "Trial and error."

Given that they'd now been in Mr. Jacobson's warehouse—and the more Steve thought about it, the more he had to admit that it was weird for the guy to keep an office way out here when there was tons of space of open on Main Street or anywhere that wasn't a huge, creepy, industrial warehouse—for nearly fifteen minutes as Robin fiddled with tumblers, he figured that was the truth.

The longer he hovered at Robin's shoulder, the more worried he got. They were entirely too exposed. The towering stacks of crates that they'd wound their way through to get to the back of the building and the offices there should have provided cover, but it didn't feel as though they were. Instead, they loomed at their backs, thrown entirely out of proportion by the shafts of moonlight lancing in from the high windows. Well, what light could make it past the layers of dust and peeling newspaper plastered to the glass. And there was another tick in the weird column: from outside, the place looked like it might as well be abandoned. So what were all these crates, suspiciously dust-free, doing here?

Steve checked back over his shoulder, scanning the deep shadows for any movement, sure that something had to be lurking. His flashlight remained dutifully trained on Robin; the last time he’d shifted it to check out a particularly worrying shadow, her elbow had nearly gotten him in the nuts, and Steve had no interest in giving her an opportunity to improve on her aim. He squinted into the dark, though he couldn’t exactly trust his eyes not to play tricks on him. Living in Hawkins, there was always a distinct possibility that what should remain firmly in the realm of Dustin’s comic books was all too real.

“I mean,” Steve said, pushing down the sense that they were being watched and turning back to Robin, “what do you really think we’re gonna find? What kind of cut-rate bad guy is just gonna keep evidence of his crimes in his office?”

Even if it was an office they only knew about because they'd found a torn up business card with Mr. Jacobson's name and this address in his garbage can back at Family Video.

“More than you think,” Robin replied, the wrinkle between her brows deepening. Steve knew better than to believe she was rethinking this plan of hers. It was probably just the lock putting up more of a fight than she expected.

He snorted. It wasn't that funny, but if he pretended it was, then maybe he'd stop feeling so goddamn jumpy. “You’ve been watching too many thrillers.”

“That’s literally the one perk of the job, Steve. Free movies.”

“Please. Like you’re not counting this," he said, waving the flashlight a little, as if that could fully encompass the magnitude of breaking and entering to try and find dirt on their new boss, "as a perk.”

Robin’s mouth quirked up into an undeniable grin that made Steve simultaneously want to groan and grin right back. How he’d managed to find so many people who ran head-first into all this conspiracy shit was beyond him. Still, it wasn’t as if he was going to just leave Robin here to whatever trouble she'd inevitably find. No, when she found trouble, Steve was going to be right there with her, reminding her he'd said all along that this was a bad idea.

She laughed a little, like she could read his mind, and shrugged. "I always knew Family Video would give me plenty of opportunity to expand my professional horizons."

"Maybe save that confidence for when you've successfully picked a lock, Buckley."

Right on cue, Robin went still. Gingerly, she rotated her picks, disengaging the deadbolt with a quiet, metallic click. 

"Sorry, what was that?"

Steve rolled his eyes but still held out a hand to pull her to her feet. 

Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and stared at the door, neither of them quite ready to take the plunge and see what was on the other side.

"It could just be nothing," Robin said, sounding doubtful for the first time of the night. For the first time since those customers started coming in complaining that none of the videos they'd rented would play. Steve had been ready to put it down to some weird fluke in the shipment of new releases, but Robin had insisted it was something more. Relentless, even in the face of Steve's skepticism, she'd gone through every affected tape to discover the strange pattern embedded in the static. They still didn't know exactly what it meant, but in Hawkins, strange tended to just be a precursor to potentially world-ending.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "But it's probably not."

She nodded, just once, and drew herself up tall. Steve couldn't help but mirror her posture, draw confidence from her own courage. 

"Ready?"

Well, no. But it was a little late for that. Steve rolled the flashlight in his palm, testing its heft. Not as good as the baseball bat, but it'd do in a pinch. 

"Let's do this."

It might be a terrible, awful idea, but it would be so much worse if they weren't in this together. 


End file.
